Author Archives: sdgibson

Let’s look at a few pages from Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence.

From The 3AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley, this exercise is called “Outrunning the Critic.” I’ve summarized it here: Write one hundred short sentences about a character in a piece of your fiction. Don’t lift your fingers from your keyboard for all one hundred … Continue reading →

From Brian Kiteley’s excellent book The 3A.M. Epiphany, you’ll find this exercise useful.

Address these questions: How do your characters act in the face of opposition/desires that contrast with their own? Do they plan, try to persuade, take physical action, for example? Describe three events that your central character remembers and that influence … Continue reading →

I found this exercise useful when trying to create characters. From Alice LaPlante’s Method and Madness, here is the PDF.